The Pilgrimage

Introduction by Colm Tóibín

Banned on its 1961 release and long overlooked, The Pilgrimage returns as a startlingly modern portrait of desire, secrecy and small‑town conformity. John Broderick’s fearless debut follows Julia Glynn, a respectable wife in an Irish midlands town whose carefully arranged life begins to fracture after a series of anonymous letters expose the frailty of the world she inhabits.

As Julia, her ailing husband, their watchful manservant and an ambitious young doctor prepare for a pilgrimage to Lourdes, the novel plunges into the hypocrisies, longings and unspoken tensions that shape a society crackling with self-awareness and concealed passions.

Darkly comic, unsettling and steeped in the atmosphere of 1950s Ireland, The Pilgrimage offers a daring exploration of sexuality, power and self‑deception. Tt stands as a vivid, transgressive classic that feels as provocative, and as essential, as ever.